Today Twitter released information in response to queries and concerns regarding Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and stated that it is "in dialogue with congressional committees" in order to aid in the investigation.

In a post published on Twitter's official blog today, the company continued the discussion of their approach to bots and misinformation that they started earlier this summer. This time, though, Twitter's Public Policy team focused more on their findings with respect to Russian attempts to undermine the democratic process.

The company said that it discovered upwards of 200 Twitter accounts affiliated with the Russian government, and three of those, which are connected to news site Russia Today, had purchased a multitude of ads targeted at the U.S. market in 2016:

Today we proactively shared with committee staff a round-up of ads that three RT accounts (@RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT) targeted to the U.S. market in 2016. As of our meetings today we believe this is the complete list from these three accounts within that time frame, but we are continuing to review our internal data and will report back to the committees as we have more to share. Based on our findings thus far, RT spent $274,100 in U.S. ads in 2016. In that year, the @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT accounts promoted 1,823 Tweets that definitely or potentially targeted the U.S. market. These campaigns were directed at followers of mainstream media and primarily promoted RT Tweets regarding news stories.

Twitter also touched on how it responds to any activity that impedes the voting process:

When we become aware of such activity we take appropriate and timely action. During the 2016 election, we removed Tweets that were attempting to suppress or otherwise interfere with the exercise of voting rights, including the right to have a vote counted, by circulating intentionally misleading information.

However, Twitter's blog post wasn't all about current political events. In addition, the company wanted to remind its users that its battle against dangerous misinformation isn't singularly focused:

It's important to note our work to fight both malicious bots and misinformation goes beyond any one specific election, event, or time period. We've spent years working to identify and remove spammy or malicious accounts and applications on Twitter. And we continue to improve our internal systems to detect and prevent new forms of spam and malicious automation, in real time, while also expanding our efforts to educate the public on how to identify and use quality content on Twitter.

The social media giant also further clarified its methods for dealing with malicious bots, spam-like human-directed accounts, political advertising, and those who attempt to game trending topics.

For more detailed information concerning this issue, visit Twitter's blog.